John Lehmann
Rudolf John Frederick Lehmann (2 June 1907 - 7 April 1987) was an English poet, one of the foremost literary editors of the 20th century, who founded the periodicals New WritingNew Writing 1938 Edition (reprinted by Ayer Co.)John Lehmann at Ayer Company Publishers and The London Magazine. Life Lehmann was born in Bourne End, Buckinghamshire, the fourth child of journalist R.C. Lehmann, and brother of Helen Lehmann, novelist Rosamond Lehmann, and actress Beatrix Lehmann. He was educated at Eton and read English at Trinity College, Cambridge. He considered his time at both as "lost years".Wright, p. 39. After a spell as a journalist in Vienna, he returned to England to found the popular periodical New Writing (1936-1940) in book format, which proved a great influence on literature of the period and an outlet for writers such as Christopher Isherwood and W.H. Auden. Lehmann included many of these authors in his anthology Poems for Spain which he edited with Stephen Spender. With the onset of World War II and paper rationing, New Writing's future was uncertain and so Lehmann wrote New Writing in Europe for Pelican Books, one of the first critical summaries of the writers of the 1930s in which he championed the authors who had been the stars of New Writing - Auden and Spender - and also his close friend Tom Wintringham and Wintringham's ally, the emerging George Orwell. Wintringham reintroduced Lehmann to Allen Lane of Penguin Books, who secured paper for The Penguin New Writing a monthly book-magazine, this time in paperback. The first issue featured Orwell's essay Shooting an Elephant. Occasional hardback editions combined with the magazine Daylight appeared sporadically, but it was as Penguin New Writing that the magazine survived until 1950. After joining Leonard and Virginia Woolf as managing director of Hogarth Press between 1938 and 1946 he established his own publishing company, John Lehmann Limited, with his novelist sister Rosamond Lehmann (who had a nine-year affair with one of Lehmann's contributing poets, Cecil Day Lewis). They published new works by authors such as Sartre and Stendhal, and discovered talents like Thom Gunn and Laurie Lee. He also published the first two books by the cookery writer Elizabeth David, A Book of Mediterranean Food and French Country Cooking. In 1954 he founded The London Magazine, remaining as editor until 1961, following which he was a frequent lecturer and completed his three-volume autobiography, Whispering Gallery (1955), I Am My Brother (1960) and The Ample Proposition (1966). In The Purely Pagan Sense (1976) is an autobiographical record of his homosexual life in England and pre-war Germany, discreetly written in the form of a novel. He also wrote the biographies Edith Sitwell (1952), Virginia Woolf and her World (1975), Thrown to the Woolfs (1978) and Rupert Brooke (1980). In 1974 Lehmann published a book of poems, The Reader at Night, hand-printed on hand-made paper and hand-bound in an edition of 250 signed copies (Toronto, Basilike, 1974). An essay by Paul Davies about the creation of this book is included in Professor A.T. Tolley's collection, John Lehmann: a Tribute (Ottawa, Carleton University Press, 1987), which also includes pieces by Roy Fuller, Thom Gunn, Charles Osborne, Christopher Levenson, Jeremy Reed, George Woodcock, and others. Recognition Publications Poetry *''A Garden Revisited, and other poems''. London: Hogarth Press, 1931. *''The Noise of History''. London: Hogarth Press, 1944. *''Forty Poems''. London: Hogarth Press, 1942. *''The Sphere of Glass, and other poems''. London: Hogarth Press, 1944. *''The Age of the Dragons: Poems, 1930-1951''. London: Longmans Green, 1951; New York: Harcourt Brace, 1952. *''Collected Poems, 1930-1963''. London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1963. *''Christ, the Hunter'' (prose poem). London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1965. *''The Reader at Night, and other poems''. Toronto: P.J. Davies, 1974. *''New and Selected Poems''. London: Enitharmon Press, 1985. Novels *''Evil Was Abroad''. London: Cresset Press, 1938. *''In the Purely Pagan Sense: A novel''. London: Blond & Briggs, 1976. Non-fiction *''Prometheus and the Bolsheviks''. London: Cresset Press, 1931. *''Down River: A Danubian study''. London: Cresset Press, 1939. *''Edith Sitwell''. London: British Council / Longmans Green, 1952. *''The Open Night'' (literary essays). London: Longmans Green, 1952; New York: Harcourt Brace, 1952. *''The Whispering Gallery: Autobiography I''. London & New York: Longmans Green, 1955; New York: Harcourt Brace, 1955. *''I Am My Brother: Autobiography II''. London: Longmans, 1959; New York: Reynal, 1960. *''Ancestors and Friends''. London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1962. *''The Ample Proposition: Autobiography III''. London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1966; *''A Nest of Tigers: Edith, Osbert, and Sacheverell Sitwell in their times''. London: Macmillan, 1968 **printed in the U.S. as A Nest of Tigers: The Sitwells in their times. Boston: Little, Brown, 1968/ *''In My Own Time: Memoirs of a literary life''. Boston & Toronto: Little, Brown, 1969. *''Holborn: An historical portrait of a London borough''. London: Macmillan, 1970. *''Lewis Carroll and the Spirit of Nonsense''. Nottingham, UK: Nottingham University, 1972. *''Virginia Woolf and Her World''. London: Thames & Hudson, 1975; New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1975. *''Edward Lear and His World''. London: Thames & Hudson, 1977; New York: Scribner, 1977. *''Thrown to the Woolfs''. London: Weidenfield & Nicholson, 1978; New York: Holt, Rinehart, & Winston, 1978. *''Rupert Brooke: His life and his legend''. London: Weidenfield & Nicholson, 1980 **published in U.S. as The Strange Destiny of Rupert Brooke. New York: Holt, Rinehart, & Winston, 1981. *''The English Poets of the First World War''. London & New York: Thames & Hudson, 1982. *''Three Literary Friendships: Byron and Shelley, Rimbaud and Verlaine, Robert Frost and Edward Thomas''. London: Quartet, 1983; New York: Holt, Rinehart, & Winston, 1983. * Christopher Isherwood: A personal memoir. London: Weidenfield & Nicholson, 1987; New York: Holt, 1987. Edited *''New Writing''. London: John Lane, 1936; London: Laurence & Wishart, 1937. *''New Writing in England''. New York: Critics Group Press, 1939. *''New Writing in Europe''. Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin, 1940; New York: A. Lane, 1940. *''The Penguin New Writing: An anthology''. Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin, 1941; New York: Penguin, 1942. *''New Writing and Daylight''. London: Hogarth Press, 1945. *''Poems from New Writing, 1936-1946''. London: J. Lehmann, 1946. *''New Writing''. London & New York: Penguin, 1947. *''French Stories from New Writing''. London: J. Lehmann, 1947. *''Orpheus: A symposium of the arts''. London: J. Lehmann / New York: New Directions. Volume I, 1948; Volume II, 1949. *''English Stories from New Writing''. London: J. Lehmann, 1951. *''Best Stories from New Writing''. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1951. *''Pleasures of New Writing: An anthology''. London: J. Lehmann, 1952. *''Modern French Stories''. New York: New Directions, 1948; London: Faber, 1956. *''Italian Stories of Today''. London: Faber, 1959. *''Vienna: A traveller's companion'' (edited with Richard Bassett). London: Constable, 1988; New York: Atheneum, 1988. Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy WorldCat.Search results = au:John Lehmann, WorldCat, OCLC Online Computer Library Center Inc. Web, Nov. 8, 2014. Poets in Poems from New Writing, 1936-1946 (1946) |- | * Robert Graves * Bernard Gutteridge * Norman Hampson * Arthur Harvey * John Heath-Stubbs * Hamish Henderson * Peter Hewett * Gillian Hughes * Pierre Jean Jouve * Laurie Lee * John Lehmann * Alun Lewis * C. Day Lewis * Lawrence Little * Federico García Lorca * David Luke * Joseph Macleod * Louis MacNeice * H.B. Mallalieu * Ewart Milne * Nicholas Moore * Vitĕslav Nezval | * William Plomer * Pantelis Prevelakis * F.T. Prince * Henry Reed * Anne Ridler * Michael Riviere * Alan Ross * May Sarton * George Seferis * Jaroslav Seifert * Edith Sitwell * Stephen Spender * W.F.M. Stewart * Randall Swingler * A.S.J. Tessimond * Dunstan Thompson * Terence Tiller * Robert Waller * Diana Witherby * L.J. Yates * Peter Yates |} See also * List of British poets References *Adrian Wright, John Lehmann: A Pagan Adventure (1998) *Gale Literary Databases,"(Rudolph) John (Frederick) Lehmann," *David Hughes. "Lehmann, (Rudolph) John Frederick (1907-1987)," *Petra Rau, University of Portsmouth. "John Lehmann." The Literary Encyclopedia. 21 Mar. 2002. The Literary Dictionary Company. Notes External links ;Poems *John Lehmann at PoemHunter (2 poems). ;About *John Lehmann in the Encyclopædia Britannica *John Lehmann at Mantex *Lehmann, John (1907-1987) at the glbtq encyclopedia * Lehmann at the Hogarth Press *[http://www.poetrymagazines.org.uk/magazine/index.asp?id=10 Lehmann and the London Magazine] *"The Poetry of John Lehmann" by Christopher Levenson Category:1907 births Category:1987 deaths Category:Alumni of Trinity College, Cambridge Category:Bloomsbury Group Category:English magazine editors Category:English memoirists Category:English poets Category:Gay writers Category:LGBT memoirists Category:LGBT people from England Category:People educated at Eton College Category:20th-century poets Category:English-language poets Category:Poets